Vance Havner Quotes

When you're young, you don't have any experience - you're charged up, but you're out of control. And if you're old and you're not charged up, then all you have is memories. But if you're charged and stimulated by what's going on around you, and you also have experience, you know what to appreciate and what to pass by.

If you look in the eyes of the young, you see flame. If you look in the eyes of the old, you see light.

Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, controls youth, and delights old age.

There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age.... I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness—a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade.

Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong.

Age, what is it? It's not a figure that has ever meant anything to me.

You can be young and still have views and opinions.

When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

Older people, who just happen to have been around longer, may not be cleverer than the young, but they have seen more.

What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.

You've got to have a young element in a show. Any project needs youth and dynamism as well old codgerdom and experience.

The advantage of age is that you swap youth for wisdom. You're so full of insecurities when you're young. 'Who am I? What do I have to do for people to like me?' You get caught up in things. You get very emotional about things.

Youth is a quality, not a matter of circumstances.

I am not young enough to know everything.

People say that if you're still angry at 52, you're not an angry young man, just a grumpy old git.

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

As I get older, I have a different look on life. I just try to be a little more tolerant and a little bit more centered about what's going on around me and not so emotional.

Now I am in my eighties, and I have known the joys and sorrows of a full life. Age, however, has its privileges. One is to reminisce, and another is to reminisce selectively.

It's amazing, seeing people of all different ages singing lyrics to songs we wrote when we were so young and thought we knew everything.

I'm happy with getting older and getting more focused. I thought I was focused when I was young, but you're only as focused as experience will allow you to be.

I used to love getting older.

You can't say when you are 25 years old that you know everything. You don't.

There are a lot of benefits to having a team of young people, but there are many benefits to having people who've made a lot of mistakes.

Aging doesn't scare me at all. You can handle the bumps each year. They're traumatic when you're younger, and they're hurtful, and you go through some terrible times, and you feel terrible.